


voices wake us, and we drown

by sunbreaksdown



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Dream Bubbles, F/F, ridiculously self-indulgent sex, selfcest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-02
Updated: 2012-04-02
Packaged: 2017-11-02 22:44:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/374173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunbreaksdown/pseuds/sunbreaksdown
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Naïvely, Aranea measures Mindfang against herself, as if (technically) being the same person gains the upper hand where nature and nurture clash, circumstances-be-damned; by the time she flutters through the shell of her bubble, the whole of the fabricated reality bends to Mindfang's will.</p>
            </blockquote>





	voices wake us, and we drown

**Author's Note:**

> Working on some silly [Scourge Shipping](http://sunbreaksdown.tumblr.com/post/20297470839/guys-guys-this-is-my-shipping-chart-ill-update) in between some more serious things.

     Aranea has seen her many times before: her ships sail against the flow of bubbles, twin moons ever high. The seas surge, storms brew, but no harm ever comes to her, to the fleet she dreams up in death. She has learnt to make the most of her afterlife.

     It takes Aranea some measure of time to visit her. Relatively speaking, after the first billion sweeps spent as a ghost, the concepts of _tomorrow_ , _next sweep_ and _two centuries from now_ stopped being quite so distinct, and Aranea thinks it better to afford Mindfang the time she needs to become accustomed to the white-shine of her own eyes. Naïvely, Aranea measures Mindfang against herself, as if (technically) being the same person gains the upper hand where nature and nurture clash, circumstances-be-damned; by the time she flutters through the shell of her bubble, the whole of the fabricated reality bends to Mindfang's will.

     Landing on the deck of a ship that should be in ruins now, saved from rot by the swell of the sea, Aranea stretches her wings out, steadying herself. In spite of the game she played, in spite of the way she helped reset the universe itself, sometimes, she still feels like a wiggler, confined to the land of a world that came before Alternia. She has never been on a ship before. She has ascended to godhood and died a death that was either heroic or just, depending on who judges her, but she has never stood aboard a ship like this.

     A _pirate_ ship, at that. A pirate ship that was never really hers in a life that she had no real bearing on, but it's still enough to excite her. Mindfang was never subjected to anything like aspects and classes, planets and quest beds; she took to the seas of her own accord, didn't wait for her supposed destiny to come crawling along and steer her. What she had, what she was, was all her own doing, crafted between her own two hands.

     The door to the captain's block is open. Mindfang isn't waiting for her, specifically, but she certainly knows she ought expect something out of the ordinary. Even by the standards of death.

     Ducking her head, though her horns are nowhere near tall enough to scrape against the door frame, Aranea folds her wings back, quietly shuffling into the block. As if there's any chance she could go unnoticed. The block was splendid once, she expects, full of the Marquise's prized treasures and luxurious furniture nailed to the flooring, but now there is nothing but cushions. Deep jade and black cushions, piled in one corner, as Mindfang sinks into them, a leather-bound book in one hand.

     On the front it reads _♏_ , blue sigil pealing from the tattered cover. 

     “Ah,” Mindfang says, short and sharp, no closer to delight than she is irritation. An oil lamp sits on the edge of a low shelf, light spilling against one side of Mindfang's face, fangs gleaming. With lips pressed tightly together, Aranea uses her tongue to trace the shape of her own teeth, finding them to be identical. “Hello, darling.”

     Mindfang is welcoming in a deeply unsettling way. She pats at the cushions beside her, and Aranea finds herself seated there before she can think better of it. But who is she to refuse hospitality in another's bubble? They sit close to each other, one cushion striking out above the rest, stopping their hips from bumping. Mindfang is used to company coming and going, no doubt, and Aranea doesn't think that the ship rocks of its own accord.

     “What are you reading?” she asks brightly, arms wrapped around her knees, nodding towards Mindfang's book. Because if she was in that position, she'd want someone to ask the same of her. Not all parts of her were washed away, when one reality ended and Mindfang's came into being. 

     “It's my journal,” Mindfang says, quietly boastful. She takes her eyes (eye; Aranea belatedly notices the eye patch) off the page, and turns to look right at her. Mindfang is under no illusion of there being breath in her lungs, and her eyes do not reflect a memory of a life that, all things considered, was wholly insignificant, compared to the afterlife presented to her. She is certain of herself, of what she's become, and has pride enough to mull over past victories. “An account of some centuries that came and went, while I was alive.”

     And Mindfang is at the centre of those recordings, Aranea supposes. Just like a character from a book. She leans, ever so slightly, so that her shoulder is against Mindfang's, peering down at the blue of her words. Mindfang holds the book in one hand, fingers splayed against the cover, thumb pressed between the curve of open pages, and tilts it for Aranea to see. She smiles; they have the same handwriting, right down to the way her paragraphs always end with a swift flick of the quill.

     “Would you read it to me? If that isn't too much trouble, that is.”

     Mindfang grins in reply, and the cut of her lips is very distinctive. Aranea doubts that she could replicate it, and she purses her lips together, not wanting to try while she's still in Mindfang's presence. Mindfang's compliance doesn't surprise her. She knew that she wanted to read her journal aloud, long before she even asked. After all, everything Aranea says eventually comes back to the topic of herself, and she doubts that Mindfang is any less affected by self-indulgent verbosity. 

     Mindfang flicks through the pages, looking for somewhere in particular to begin. She must read her own words over and over again, as if she isn't wrapped up in an eternity that permits her to relive the memories, looking for her most remarkable passages, the corners of history that she's twisted for the sake of her entertainment and reputation alike. Or maybe she believes that her words are the only ones that can be trusted.

     “Here we are. I've little doubt that you'll enjoy this tale,” Mindfang says, holding the book in one hand again. Sometimes, it's nice to arrive in a bubble and not have to explain everything to fellow ghosts. Mindfang knows who she is. There's no way that she couldn't have figured it out already, what with the way she keeps turning her head towards her, vision tracing the shape of her jaw, finding no discrepancies greater than those that come with different hairstyles from different times. “Now, settle down.”

     Aranea doesn't think that she's been particularly fidgety throughout their meeting, moving only when the rocking of the ship deems it necessary, but she doesn't say so much as a word in her own defence when Mindfang wraps an arm around her. She relaxes immediately, almost afraid that she'll sink right through the pillows and then drip between the floorboards; hundreds upon thousands of sweeps without a flicker of thought paid towards contact and a person can begin to forget what being touched feels like.

     Eyes closing, she rests her head against Mindfang's shoulder, careful with her horns. When Mindfang reads from her book, she's well aware that she has an audience to captivate. There is a liveliness in her voice, a deep-seated commitment to the words that Aranea feels reverberate around the inside of Mindfang's chest. She does not speak as if reading about herself; the character Mindfang speaks of is not Mindfang, in the same way that Aranea is not Mindfang, either.

     There are similarities between them, on the surface. Aranea with her unintentional, self-conscious arrogance, somehow always destined to bring things back around to herself; and Mindfang with her iron-clad narcissism, evident in the way she strokes her fingers against Aranea's cheek, nails brushing against the side of her neck. She narrates her journal not as how she sees herself, but how she expects the world at large to see her.

     Aranea doesn't blame her. She thinks she'd like people to remember her as some great, heroic figure, taming seas as her ship's hull cuts the waves in twain, as well.

     Mindfang's arm moves from her shoulders, dropping lower, so that her hand splays out across Aranea's far hip. All the while, she keeps her eyes fixed on the journal's pages, and doesn't falter over so much as a single syllable. Aranea presses herself closer to Mindfang's side, opens her eyes just enough to see her lips part in a smile that she doubts she often shows, as if whatever becomes of this will have been initiated entirely by Aranea.

     Mindfang continues to read, voice rising. Her hand moves from Aranea's hip, down the outside of her thigh. As Aranea stretches one leg out, innocuously inviting, she thinks that it really is remarkable how innately familiar Mindfang seems to be with the folds of her garment. 

     Aranea cranes her neck, nose pressing to the corner of Mindfang's jaw. She lets out a soft, appreciative groan as Mindfang's fingers brush against the inside of her thigh, eyes screwing shut tightly, as if she has any intention of taking in the rest of Mindfang's story. She half-listens to the world through Mindfang's words, and realises that she is a cruel, callous creature, concerned about and content with only herself; but it's hard to care, when her fingers are cool and deft between her legs.

     Aranea tries lifting her hips towards Mindfang's hand, but it's difficult to shift smoothly when the cushions keep sliding out from beneath her. Mindfang laughs, and it takes Aranea a moment to realise that it isn't part of the text. She feels her own face burn blue, and Mindfang turns her head towards her, murmuring against her lips that it really is a remarkable shade. But she doesn't kiss her. Aranea growls from the back of her throat, somewhere between frustration and need and just the slightest hint of pity, and finally pushes herself out of the cushions.

     She misses Mindfang's fingers, sorely and desperately, like nothing else she remembers missing in the last few millenniums, but the loss is all but recovered when she swings one leg over Mindfang's lap, met with her hands at her sides. Mindfang snaps her teeth and presses her mouth to her neck, tongue running across where a pulse point once would've been. She laughs again, and Aranea's frustration mounts in a giddy sort of way, until she's bowing her head with a _hmph_ and demanding a kiss from Mindfang.

     Deciding that any boldness on her own part can only reflect the brass Mindfang's shown thus far, she reaches for Mindfang's skirts, hitching them up. Her fingers press against the webbing of Mindfang's thigh-highs in the same moment that Mindfang's fangs prick at her teeth, and Aranea draws back, instinctively, covering the sudden, jerky movement with a statement.

     “You didn't tell me how you lost your eye,” Aranea says, hoping to hit a raw nerve. Mindfang's one good eye only seems to glow brighter at that, her hands making faster work of Aranea's underwear than Aranea does of hers, even with a head start.

     “It's not the most cheerful of stories,” Mindfang says, hissing out that last word as she pulls Aranea closer. They're a tangle of limbs, skirts bundled up around their waists, hips grinding together. “One could be moved to say that the underlying theme is a little too black for the nature of this particular engagement.”

     Aranea's body burns all over when Mindfang moves up against her, and she leans forward, foreheads knocking together. She wraps her arms around her shoulders, fingers knotting in her hair.

     “I like—I like stories,” she says, feeling the urge to breathe for the first time since her death that's slowly starting to feel a lot more heroic. “All kinds of stories. I have excavated the very—”

     She pauses, swallows, body tensing up entirely when Mindfang lets out a soft _ah_.

     “The very depths of these dream bubbles, and I have spoken to more dead trolls than...”

     Her point is lost to the way she bucks her own hips, her pursuit of knowledge suddenly secondary to taking as much from Mindfang as she can. Mindfang's nails dig in at her sides and Aranea groans, licking at her own dry lips.

     “What did you say your name was?” Mindfang asks, bringing up one hand to rest against Aranea's cheek. Rolling her shoulders, she knocks Aranea's arms away from around them, and repositions herself between the cushions, until she's all but flat on her back. A few stray cushions prop up her head, and Aranea leans forward, hands pressed to the sides of Mindfang's head, quickly guided up to Mindfang's chest by Mindfang herself.

     “Aranea—,” she says, moaning entirely inappropriately around her own name.

     Mindfang repeats it over and over to herself, voice surprisingly controlled, considering the way she works her hips up against Aranea's, eyes on her the entire time.

     “Well, Aranea, darling. Perhaps you and I will have another chance to discuss such matters at a more opportune time.”

     Head tilted back, Aranea nods in agreement over and over, and though her body trembles wonderfully and her hair sticks to her forehead, there's something very _wrong_ about the way she's allowed herself to play into Mindfang's game so willingly. She's only helping Mindfang think more of herself, only confirming what Mindfang believes to be the truth of her words, and Aranea wonders, if she'd been the one to arrive on Alternia, if she'd be anything like the woman warm and slick beneath her.

     But any echoes of coherent thought are soon crushed by blinding light, and her back arches before she falls forwards, nails raking at the floorboards. It is a terrible, choking moan that rips itself from her throat, as if this is all too much for her, and Mindfang places a metal hand at her hip, holding on tightly, so that she can't retreat. She whispers that Aranea's doing so, _so_ well, and keeps her there, even though she's still far too sensitive. Every roll of Mindfang's hips makes her jerk and shudder.

     And then, when Mindfang is sated, either moments or minutes later, Aranea falls down atop her. Mindfang's arms wrap tightly around her, and before Aranea can think to ask about her steel arm, Mindfang is saying something about how marvellous her wings are, and how she'd like to hear the story that goes along with them, at some point.

     It shouldn't be so strange, uncovering similarities between herself and her other self, but as Aranea reaches out for her scattered clothing, she knows that she needs to be a lot more prepared for the next visit.


End file.
